T + 372 Deja Vu

Since my last post celebrating one year of transplant I have certainly had a deja vu feeling, or déjà vu if you want to be posh.

I've been feeling unwell since last Wednesday 16th September evening and today is the first day I have felt well enough to log on to work, though I'm still not 100%

I'm fairly sure it is mostly steroid withdrawal related, I just get these waves of total fatigue come over me. Unfortunately when it came over me on Wednesday I was in the middle of cooking a lasagne for my tea using a new recipe. I'm not quite sure how I managed to get through it to be honest though as soon as it didn't need any attention from me I had a lie down while it finished cooking. The result was passable and I did find eating a portion perked me up a bit so I wonder if it is blood sugar related? I'll ask the doc about this when I go to the clinic next.

The following morning I realised I had left out the wine and only used half the amount of cheese sauce I should have in the lasagne so I was clearly not focussing well. Even so it was passable and I look forward to trying it again when I am "compos mentis".

From the Wednesday onwards I have suffered from nausea in the mornings and bouts of fatigue coming over me that have made doing anything but sitting or lying down really difficult.

On Friday I had a bit of a scare with my temperature going up to 37.8 ( 38 is the magic number when I have to ring the hospital ). I had a two hour nap and my temperature had come down but I went on to sleep another 12 hours.

I might have had an infection starting but it looks like even my puny immune system could fend it off. Maybe the virus or whatever infectious agent it was , wasn't having a good day either.

The problem since has been working out how much I can manage and not doing too much but the tipping point into lethargy seems to be quite sudden. On Monday afternoon I helped Gareth in the garden a bit and then came in to do the washing up and that was too much for me and I had to stop half-way through.

The trick is stopping before I do too much which, if you will allow me a digression, reminds me of a customer I had when I worked for a CAD company.

The client had just done a health survey interview for all staff and my contact, a hard drinking Northern Irish man was asked about his drinking. "I drink until I've had enough" he said. "And how do you know when you have had enough?" asked the interviewer. "That's easy", came the reply, "When you fall off your stool, have two more, then stop."

So aside from feeling rough like I did a year ago I also noticed one other little coincidence that has been replicated from a year ago. Channel Four showed the three Lord of the Rings films on successive Saturdays. I remember this helped me through a couple of evenings when I was on the Bone Marrow Transplant unit. So seeing the trailers for it again on the same weekends this year brought it all back to me. Spooky. (I really should get round to finishing reading the books, but that is another story [pun intended]).

However I'm fairly sure I'm not in a time warp or ground hog day situation, which is just as well as I am really looking forward to getting back to the good progress I was making before the last two little hiccoughs I've had.